Today we're going to be talking about why you can't stop thinking about your ex and what to do, what to do. This is very common. I think probably every person going through a breakup has a really difficult time trying to stop the thoughts about their ex. It's very intrusive.

Coach Margaret: 00:52 I had cheerios for breakfast. My ex love cheerios. Little daily things like that will come up.

Craig Kenneth: 01:00 Yeah. Yeah. Like I used to remember that like, oh, I would get off work at a certain time where would my b? And so at that certain time I would look at the phone because I'd be like, this would be the time I would call them or they would call me, you know what I mean? And so it would be like even the reminders like a time or how your day went or things like that would always. It's a huge,

Coach Margaret: 01:24 gosh, that's a huge gaping hole in your, in your life. Then suddenly now we did one about obsessive thoughts not long ago, but I've had some additional thoughts since that I wanted to share with you. And it's such a huge topic. It's such a huge topic. Um, and if I don't know if you remember, but a few weeks ago when I did it, I referred to George or Georgina, either one of this couple and just as we're trying to move on, they keep trying, trying to come into our head with those obsessive thoughts by George. I thought I told you like goodbye last week. And here you are again. And what I said at the time, what we said at that time is that those are thoughts from our unconscious letting us know that we need to work more on this process of grieving and getting over that we're not finished yet.

Coach Margaret: 02:14 And that's why they keep popping up in our head all the time. You need to talk about me a little more. You better not have forgotten me yet. You have to talk about it. So what are the obvious things that I neglected to say at that point is with anything puzzling or overwhelming that happens to us in life. The first best thing to do is make a narrative. Make a story so that you have a way to tell yourself at anybody else you choose to share this with. Uh, what happened, what happened? Um, my girlfriend dumped me, my boyfriend of roughly said goodbye to me. Um, but you have to have a way to tell yourself the story. Maybe also speculating in maybe some things you did wrong or how shocked you work if you didn't see this coming or what things about him we're getting on your nerves and you may have had the same thought.

Coach Margaret: 03:09 He just acted first. All kinds of different things, which could be one of the main reasons that people love the email coaching. Yes. Because they're creating that network, creating. Then a good point, great point. They're creating the narrative. They are when they talked with us as well. Tell me what happened and people will give us the narrative. Very good, very good point. But somehow it makes things much more manageable if you have a story and you've got to be honest, if, if there are parts of it that you need to own, it's important that you do that and it's important that the other person do that to. So first of all, make yourself a story, okay. That you can live with and that you can at least if not, be happy about, have a handle on an intellectual handling. Um, it's extremely important to do that in any crisis of your life.

Coach Margaret: 03:59 I'm scarlet O'hara should have done it at least halfway through, gone with the wind. Um, otherwise we can end up being left feeling unlovable and as if this happened for no reason at all. And oftentimes when we talk with people, they'll say, I didn't see it coming. I was blindsided and I feel like it came out of the blue. But if we help them to explore a little more, and I'll say more about that in a minute, I'm usually that you find out that they have more answers than they think or if you finish the narrative and you still have major questions you want to go on with it, but you certainly don't want to be left feeling unlovable. And sometimes you're aware that there were problems in the relationship, but you just had no idea that the person would leave you for the. Exactly.

Coach Margaret: 04:48 I had somebody tell me one time, I thought my accusing my wife of cheating on me all the time was just a minor annoyance. Uh, no, it was not a minor annoyance, you know, understanding where the other person comes comes from. It's really difficult for us. And not everyone, to my surprise, assumes that the other person has the same feelings that they do. I mean, if I feel sadness. So I guess you do to um, people don't necessarily make that assumption and it's important that you make that assumption that, you know, if this would make me feel bad, probably it makes my partner feel bad. We can, we tend to become very self absorbed when we've been with a partner for any length of time and especially at a breakup when our own anxiety becomes the major topics. Okay. So first you want to get a clear picture of what happened and why. If it's possible, it's not always possible to know how other people think. Yeah, sure. I get a lot of people that don't seem to have all the puzzle pieces and I'm like, we're missing some major puzzle

Coach Margaret: 06:02 Right. I don't know them yet. Sometimes they don't know. No, they don't and there's no more helpless feeling and we'd like to spare you that. Recently I happened to have had several cases where the breaking up partner has absolutely refused to share any reasons with their partner. And that's cool. It is cool. It really is. Um, so they left to guess. But what I have found is that when I talked with them a little further and say, now you know, this person pretty well, you knew this person, how long you were with them, how long? Um, tell me more about him. Usually people find that they know much more about their ex partner then they thought they did and that when they really begin to look at that, they do have a better idea than they've been able to share. I think a lot of times they have to talk it out.

Coach Margaret: 06:57 They have to think out loud. Yeah. That's one of the ways that people think out loud with us and we help them make thoughts, make sense. Um, but yet, chances are you know, enough about your partner to kind of guess. One of the things I have found also with people who refuse to share reasons is that there are people who are afraid of being close with others. And I know that's always a mind boggle because what we assume is that we're in a relationship because we want to be close to each other and you know, everybody likes that and everybody wants that, but not everybody can live with it and that we often have to consider the fact that what's reasonable for us may be too much for a partner

Craig Kenneth: 07:51 and sometimes that even means the person that is attracted to the avoidant because they know they won't ever get too close. Right.

Coach Margaret: 08:00 That's true. If you're attracted to someone who avoids relationships while you may have made a good decision because neither of you wants too much closeness that would work. I talked to a guy today that I thought that was going on with them really, really, that they were both avoiding and yet they wanted to. Relationship has said, I hope they find a way, if that's what they want. And I

Craig Kenneth: 08:22 said to him that I thought part of the appeal to the girl he was interested in and she had a lot of issues. She had a long history of abuse and all kinds of things. And I said, you know what, I said, if this girl didn't have any of those issues, would you even wanted to date her? And he was like,

Coach Margaret: 08:40 Huh, that must be what he's like, I need to think about that, what he's trained to do. Um, but that's what afraid Craig's favorite words is counter intuitive. And sometimes, you know, you say, well, I've done everything for so and so I did this for them. I did that for them. And because we all have a need for autonomy also, it may have been too much. Um, yeah. So there's often that part of it and it's hard to get it that sometimes if after all this hard work you've just done doing your narrative and figuring out as best you can, where your partner was coming from and reminding yourself that you are still lovable, no matter what this person thinks. If after all that you still finding it difficult to stop the obsessive thoughts, I would suggest that you think you do a little more in depth exploring.

Coach Margaret: 09:35 One of the obvious questions. What's not obvious unless you're in the business is have you had a series of losses because if people have had a series of losses in the last say three years, then it's going to be extremely difficult to deal with this loss and it may be necessary to kind of go back and come to terms with some of the earlier losses before you even get to this one. Okay? And I've known that to happen, so I often ask us to have there been any recent deaths in the family. So that's one thing. The other thing is, does this person have this partner that you can't get out of your head? Does this person remind you of a parent? Because that can be a very, very personal, powerful issue. Absolutely. Yeah. And that can skew your thinking while you're in the relationship and when you're leaving the relationship that you feel like you're abandoning, not just your partner, but your family, whether or not you're the one who initiated the break up.

Coach Margaret: 10:34 So if you do all of these things and you still don't feel good, you might want to think about your local mental health clinic. Okay? You cannot go wrong by working on yourself and you cannot ever go wrong by doing that. And when you go back and you ask people what their self talk is, what kinds of things they think of themselves, you really alarmed by what you hear. I've heard several people just in the last couple of weeks say that they wonder if they're unlovable. Very few people in this world are unlovable and none of them have met us. I think we worked for one of them. I think we did. Yes. I think we did work for one of them. Yes. Back there somewhere. Yes. Um, but you know, so ask, don't be afraid to ask. And for some people, remember that you're being able to move on after a relationship is not about them. It's about you. If somebody refuses to give you reasons, there's no law that we can enforce that will make them do it. So you have enough resources within yourself inevitably to move on. So don't put that, don't put that ball in somebody else's court and it's, it's hard to get there. It is hard and it takes time to get there and we don't expect you to get there

Craig Kenneth: 11:54 overnight because many of you won't. And you know, sometimes breakups take a year or even years to get over and I think we're going to do a video on that soon.

Coach Margaret: 12:07 Yes, we are great because people think there's something wrong with them. If in three to six months they haven't recovered and we have to remember that this is an instant society which does things quickly and there was some process things you can't do. You can tell feelings to hurry up and resolve, but they won't do it no matter how nicely you ask. I've noticed that. Okay. Yeah. Could you please let Mr Show and still get over this and in the, in the next three months, he really wants to move on. No, you can't hurry.

Craig Kenneth: 12:38 Working through a breakup takes time. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of hard work and recognizing things about yourself that you may not like knowledging them or even seeing them for the first time because it's not easy to see our shortcomings and sometimes it's really scary and sometimes we feel embarrassed or ashamed and you know, all you can do is grow from that and learn from that and make changes and decided to do things differently,

Coach Margaret: 13:08 but you also have to like yourself. We all like other people as they are and with their shortcomings and their words, but very few people can do that for themselves. And still I'm a good person. Even though I have the following fall, he has to four page list.

Craig Kenneth: 13:23 Yeah. You know, it's interesting. It is how we are more accepting over friends and family with else but not our own.

Coach Margaret: 13:30 And how often do you hear? Well, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Did you give it to yourself? No.

Craig Kenneth: 13:35 And I'm sure a lot of that had to do with maybe how our parents taught us. Sure. In that, the, the, the words that they put on us century, what would they would say to us when we were little? Yep. That's why you have to work through things and that's how you change them and that's why we say, you know, just because you may feel like your ex isn't going to come back, doesn't mean they won't and if you don't continue the personal growth, whether it be three months or six months and you just give up, you go back to your old ways, either you're going to get another opportunity with your ex and it'll fall apart or you'll find somebody else that you love and get attached to and that falls apart too. And then you stuck and you're back to where you were at the beginning of this breakup. Maybe even worse because now you feel even worse.

Coach Margaret: 14:23 Now you feel even worse. Yeah. So work on your selves. T